Paul Krugman for Treasury Secretary

[Stinger]

On a similar topic:

This week, as the Washington Post reported, IMF top economist Olivier Blanchard issued an “amazing mea culpa” for failing to foresee how austerity measures would undermine economic growth.

“Forecasters significantly underestimated the increase in unemployment and the decline in domestic demand associated with fiscal consolidation,” Blanchard and co-author Daniel Leigh, a fund economist, wrote in a paper on growth forecast errors. The authors essentially admit that they failed to consider important factors about how regions might react to austerity in times of financial crisis when they advised IMF austerity policy.

Well, duh. Just duh.

[Crock Hunter]

Let's try that at home and see how quickly we wind up bankrupt.

Utterly amazing that so many of you nitwits think that a family's finances are like that of a government's.. but I suppose to you bumper-sticker scholars .. it feels right.. . ..

[O Really]

Let's try that at home and see how quickly we wind up bankrupt.

Utterly amazing that so many of you nitwits think that a family's finances are like that of a government's.. but I suppose to you bumper-sticker scholars .. it feels right.. . ..

Also, some of the same crowd that thinks a government is the same as a business. I'm waiting for an example of a top 1000 corporation that got that way by refusing to increase revenue and relying only on eliminating operating departments.

[O Really]

...I'm waiting for an example of a top 1000 corporation that got that way by refusing to increase revenue and relying only on eliminating operating departments.

Is Bain Capital in the top 1000?

Umm, no. And neither are many of the companies Bain "managed." A lot are out of business, though.

[mike]

Nominate Paul Krugman for Treasury Secretary (petition)...

"There are currently 211,183 signatures."

Partisan62 would have trouble getting 2000 signatures for his plan to return to a slave economy, and more than 1900 of them would use fake names.

LOL!

The petition is now up to 214,245 signatures and quickly growing.
In two minutes time, I refreshed the page and it is now 214,329 signatures ...

Thanks, Vrede!

[mike]

There it is, Racist Econ 101. It's pitiful that your fear and hatred of blacks consumes your life.

What else would you expect from Partisan?
He still thinks President Obama is a Kenyan ...

Either that or he's merely yet another troll.

[billy.pilgrim]

Let's try that at home and see how quickly we wind up bankrupt.

Utterly amazing that so many of you nitwits think that a family's finances are like that of a government's.. but I suppose to you bumper-sticker scholars .. it feels right.. . ..

Well, step up and explain it to us, dumbass. Show us how spending more than your receive in revenues somehow makes any sense at all. You are as stupid as Krugman, so it's no surprise that you would be supporting this charlatan.

Jack Lew isn't much better, but what else would we expect from the Kenyan.

duh - take a look at the 30s and 40s, FDR spent us out of the same right-wing hole that we are in today

what I would like explained is the right wing novelty that by giving all the economy to less than 1% of the population creates some sort of benevolent aristocracy who will pee their leavings onto the other 99% thereby creating wealth for all

[O Really]

The anti-spend zealots don't consider the economic impact of federal projects. It's not like the feds just throw 100 million out the window and magically a bridge and highway appears. Every federal contract goes to a private industry company, who hires people, spends money of its own, and generates revenue. Everybody who works for that company isn't on unemployment, pays taxes, buys stuff, and supports other businesses. Well, except for direct expense to support military adventures. That part is pretty much just tossed out the window.

[O Really]

Even "normal" non-adventurist military spending creates far fewer jobs than just about any alternative. There was nothing special about WWII spending's economic impact, it was just spending.

Manufacturers of equipment and materiel of all sorts do well with military spending, but for war use, it's inherently wasteful. It's one thing to buy a humvee at a cost of $70,000 (or $175,000 if you actually want armor on it), but quite another to send it and its personnel down the road to hopefully and frequently unsuccessfully dodge IEDs, resulting in loss of vehicle and loss or disablement of personnel along with the resultant short and long-term costs associated with that. Getting the humvee built helped the private economy. Getting it and its troops blown up costs more than the original positive impact.

[Bungalow Bill]

Things would likely be different if Bush II didn't see that surplus coming and
decided that taxes should be cut so that surplus would go away. Worked like
a charm. Good job, Dumbya.

[rstrong]

Things would likely be different if Bush II didn't see that surplus coming and
decided that taxes should be cut so that surplus would go away. Worked like
a charm. Good job, Dumbya.

He also greatly increased spending, even before 9/11.

SFGate, July 23, 2003: Republican spending orgy

In the first three years of the Bush administration, government spending has climbed -- in real, inflation-adjusted terms -- by a staggering 15.6 percent. That far outstrips the budget growth in Clinton's first three years, when real spending climbed just 3.5 percent. Under the first President Bush, the comparable figure was 8.3 percent; under Ronald Reagan, 6.8 percent, and under Jimmy Carter, 13.3 percent. No, that's not a mistake: Bush is a bigger spender than Carter was.

To be sure, Bush's budgets have had to account for Sept. 11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But even when defense spending is excluded, discretionary spending has soared by nearly 21 percent in Bush's first three years. In Clinton's first triennium, nondefense discretionary spending declined slightly. If their budgets were all you had to go by, you might peg Bush for the Democrat and Clinton for the Republican.

[Bungalow Bill]

Deep tax cuts and increased spending. Yep that will get rid of the deficit.